Light of Dawn

by Vannetta Chapman

  Gabe left for a debriefing.

  “What would you like to see, Shelby?” Max linked his arm through hers and led her down the street.

  “I have a million questions, and I’d like to ask them of some normal people—not a lieutenant or captain or general. Normal people.”

  “Got it. Our quest is to find the little people. Lilliputians. Normal folk.”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “Watch for signs that say ‘Island of Lilliput, next right.’”

  She socked him in the shoulder, and he pretended that it hurt.

  “What would Jonathan Swift think of this? Of our new world?”

  “He knew something of political upheaval.”

  “But this…” Shelby shook her head. “This is starting over.”

  “Do you have your notebook?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  EXCERPTS FROM SHELBY’S JOURNAL

  Marna Blaylock and her twin daughters, Sylvia and Sheridan, have been in New Town since November.

  “We were driving north out of Wichita when we stopped at one of those gas stations in the center of the road. I took the girls to use the facilities. We knew there wouldn’t be water or plumbing, but Sylvia and Sheridan liked to pretend that they were washing their hands after they took care of their bathroom needs. We were there in the bathroom when we heard gunshots. I told the girls to hide, to crawl under the counter, and I took off running. My husband was already dead when I reached him, and his murderers? They had taken the car. Nothing left for us. I couldn’t bury him, but I stayed by his side, prayed for him, and then I found an old, tattered blanket in the trash bin to cover him with.

  “We stayed there—in that bathroom with no food and only the water I could catch from the rain—for eight days. And we were rescued when one of the patrols came through. I was afraid…afraid to trust them. But by that time, my little girls were lying on the floor in the bathroom, listless, unable to even raise their heads. My little girls, they were dying, starving to death right in front of my eyes. So it was either trust the men in that patrol or allow my children to die. I chose to trust.”

  Marna now works in the educational center—she was a fifth grade teacher before the flare. Her daughters attend school in the same building. They are in the third grade.

  Johnny Henderson is a retired civil engineer, who is now working for New Town.

  “I worked in Oklahoma City for twenty-two years. Metro area had grown to a million and a half people. And yeah, I was there during the bombing of the federal building. Thought that was the worst I’d ever see. Turns out I was wrong. Here’s the thing that haunts me. We had an emergency response plan, and we activated it immediately after the grid failed. At first it seemed to be working—we set up food banks, neighborhood watch groups, even emergency medical stations. But within the first forty-eight hours, people panicked. Not just that, but the criminal portion of our population grew bold. Those two things alone sealed our fate.

  “After my wife died from the flu, if you can believe that…well, after that I knew I had to leave. I had a dirt bike I kept in the back of the garage. Hadn’t used it in a year or so, but the tires were still good. I crammed some supplies in a backpack kind of like yours, and I headed north. Made it all the way to Topeka, which was a bitter place to be in December. Even then there were rumors of the government setting up centers. Some said that they were for the elite. Others swore that the central government had a plan and a list of people they would take—like so many doctors, scientists, even engineers.

  “I didn’t believe the details, but the fact that the rumor kept resurfacing told me there was some truth to it. And it couldn’t be too far north. The weather in Topeka was brutal. Can you imagine the areas north of there? So I turned around, found a map in an abandoned car, decided the Flint Hills were as good a place as any to start over. Took me three weeks of crisscrossing the place to find them. By then, I’d used all my supplies and weighed less than I had in high school.

  “But if the rumors were true, I thought they might let an engineer in. I don’t know why I even cared, why I wanted to live…maybe to honor Amelia’s life, to fulfill the promises I’d made her near the end.

  “As far as New Town…well, I don’t know if it’s the future of America, but it’s a lot better than what’s out there. From an engineering standpoint, if we are going to survive, this is the only way that will work.”

  Ryan Dane was a homeless teen, living in Omaha, Nebraska, when the flare hit.

  “I might have been living on the streets, but I wasn’t stupid. Overnight the shelters had to close because they couldn’t handle the number of people demanding rooms, which was crazy. It isn’t like there was less housing or hotels. Maybe there were a few extra folks traveling through or stranded or whatever. I don’t know where all those people came from. Omaha only has half a million. The downtown area is nothing to brag about. But suddenly, the streets were flooded with people looking for a place to stay.

  “When the shelters couldn’t take in even a fraction of the folks looking for help, then people grew violent. I saw an older guy who was in charge of the Sixth Street Mission shot because he refused to hand over what little food they had in storage. The group who shot him climbed over the gate, took the keys from the dead guy’s pocket, and then stole everything they could find. After that there wasn’t any reason left to stay.

  “So I walked south. I sure didn’t plan to spend the winter in Nebraska. A family picked me up. They were traveling in a pickup that looked like something out of The Grapes of Wrath. Lots of kids and even two dogs. We circled west of Kansas City. They’d set up some pretty serious roadblocks, and they didn’t seem any too friendly to new folks. So we headed west. Maybe that was a mistake. We ran out of gas a few miles southwest of Topeka. They were determined to go back into town to try their luck there. I didn’t want to have anything to do with densely populated places—and yeah, at that point even Topeka qualified. Mostly, I wanted to be out on my own. To try and scrounge up enough to eat, find a cave, and hide out for a few years.

  “And I did find some caves. They’re actually all over the hills. General Massey says they’re hard to locate. He says I have an uncanny knack. So I go out with patrols twice a week. We’ve found a hundred and twelve so far. I know—you’re wondering, so what? What good is a cave? But they’re an excellent place to store provisions. Keeping everything here in New Town? Not smart. We might be well guarded, but these days anything can happen.

  “I think about that family—the one that gave me a ride. I hope they’re okay. One thing is for sure—they saved my life. As far as New Town, it’s all right. There are a few folks who are on power trips, but aren’t there always? There aren’t any homeless, though. If you live in New Town, you get a place to live and three squares. You have to work, or you’re booted out. Wanna eat? You gotta work.”

  Sissy Jones is a doctor at the medical facility, twenty-eight years old with beautiful, black skin and hair cut so short I could see her scalp.

  “I worked in the FEMA camps at first. We thought we could make a difference, but when the military pulled out, we were easy targets. After we were attacked the second time, we packed up our camp…left what supplies remained with local people we trusted. Left the patients too. I was in New Mexico then. You can imagine the heat in June. No A/C. No fans. My parents used to say that it was tolerable because of the low humidity, but that’s with modern conveniences. Without it, that city was unbearable. Lots of folks were walking out of Albuquerque, headed north to the mountains or west to the coast. I went home, picked up my parents, and drove them to Santa Fe. We had some terrible nights, but we made it. I pray every night that they are still all right.

  “Once they were settled, though, my parents insisted that I get back to work, that I go and help people. I was assigned to a mercy mission with a group of medics trying to care for the people who hadn’t made it into Santa Fe. We were out on Interstat
e 25, which no one would try now. But we were naive then. Still thought the world was operating under the old rules. We’d nearly made it to Raton when we were ambushed. Everyone but myself and Garrett… Have you met Garrett? We were the only two who survived. We tried to make our way back to Santa Fe, but it was impossible going on foot. Eventually, we caught a ride on a military vehicle, and they brought us here.

  “I can’t say that I agree with the administration’s decision to build a prototype town before going out to help the general population. I’ve heard there are at least a dozen of them in different states. Personally, I think they’re waiting for the population to die down to a manageable number.”

  Joe Hunter recently celebrated his one hundredth birthday. He’s an adviser to several different departments for everything from how to make candle wax to what indigenous plants are edible. Joe’s age and experience are considered a huge asset in New Town.

  “The days immediately following the flare were bad, but the worst I’ve ever seen? Probably not. The worst I’ve ever seen was Dachau, a concentration camp in the southern part of Germany. US forces liberated prisoners from there in 1945. Yes, that was the worst I’ve ever seen. Inhumane doesn’t begin to describe it. And yet in the midst of such tragedy, there are also signs of God’s grace…The world has changed before. This is another change. The one thing you can be sure of is that there will be more changes. You can count on that. Change is the only constant.”

  Kinsley Storm works with the horses in New Town. She’s from Garden City, Texas, where she received a four-year scholarship to the university of her choice for her participation in and success with the Wild Horse and Burro Program. She’s twenty-four years old.

  “My family and I suspected that something was going on in the Flint Hills. There were rumors, people claiming to have seen lights, that sort of thing. Still, we probably wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for the lightning that struck our place and burned it to the ground. There was no water to battle the blaze.

  “I thought that was a real tragedy at the time. Now I realize we probably wouldn’t have survived the winter. New Town has been good for us. Mom works in the kitchen, and Pop’s skills have been in high demand…he was a retired dentist. I say “was retired” because he’s working full-time now. There’s plenty of work for him here, and he’s needed. He really is. Did you know folks can die from a tooth infection? He’s also training a dozen other dentists. Mostly, they were beginning their medical degree, but there’s no way to finish that now. Pop says hands-on is going to be good enough. He says it’s better than folks suffering, waiting for the universities to crank back up and spit out a new supply of dentists.

  “You could say I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I work with the horses every day. I don’t have to worry about paying rent or living too far from my family. I love it here, and I think the general is absolutely correct that we need to make sure this works before offering it as a beacon of hope. My friend Micah used to say that five minutes of preparation was worth an entire day of frantic labor.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Lunch had been another MRE. They were available at various kiosks around New Town. You walked up and received one. There was no money exchanged, no need to produce identification. If you were in New Town, then you were supposed to be there, you were doing a job, and you’d earned your lunch.

  Max peered into the MRE pouch—Captain Country Chicken. “There’s no chicken in this. I can guarantee you that.”

  “This Cheese Tortellini is great.” Shelby grinned as she scooped out another spoonful.

  “So what’s your opinion of New Town now?”

  “Conflicted. On the one hand, I admire what they’re trying to do. Creating a prototype for the great American city—”

  “Town. No big cities are on the planning board from what I’ve heard.”

  “Town then. Creating a prototype is a laudable goal, but I keep thinking of all the people we’ve seen on the outside. People who need help from their government.”

  “What would you have them do?” They were sitting on a park bench. People passed back and forth around them…all sorts of people. Different ages and ethnicities, both genders, all busy fulfilling their portion of the social contract in New Town.

  “There are two things that bother me the most about what’s going on out there.” Shelby pointed her fork at him. “The lawlessness and the lack of supplies. What is the point of a federal government if it can’t address those needs?”

  “And yet when our government was originally founded, it did not provide supplies, and legal matters were left in the hands of the local communities. Think about your average family in the early 1700s. They weren’t protected by soldiers or police.”

  “I don’t need a history lesson, Max.”

  But Max was warming up to the comparison. Shelby had always been good at that, pushing him to see things in a new light. They often butted heads, but it was a process that he found helpful. “Neither did the government provide basic necessities for families.”

  Shelby finished her meal and tossed the package into a trash receptacle. A label affixed to the front of the box assured her any trash would be recycled and used to produce more supplies for New Town. “We don’t live in the 1700s, Max. I realize the flare has changed things, but we’re not the society we were then. We’re a society that has grown accustomed to law and order and to basic necessities.”

  “How could what’s left of the government possibly provide those things?”

  “Not my problem. They have plenty of smart people working for them.”

  “Even smart people can’t create manna from nothing.”

  “Excuses.”

  “Manufacturing and distribution have to be reestablished—”

  “You should be on my side. On the side of people outside of New Town.”

  “And it would have to be reestablished on a much smaller scale because of the lack of power.”

  “Are you even listening?”

  Shelby’s face was beginning to turn red, a clear indication that she’d lost all patience with him. It should have aggravated him because he was right on this. She didn’t want to admit it, and who could blame her? Carter’s life was hanging by a somewhat fragile thread.

  Still, the amount of energy she put into arguing made him smile.

  “Stop that,” she said, jumping to her feet.

  “Stop what?”

  “Getting that dreamy look.”

  “I was dreaming?”

  “And smiling.”

  “You don’t want me to smile?”

  “You are infuriating.” She turned and stomped away.

  He almost went after her. He wanted to follow her, pull her into his arms, and kiss her senseless. Maybe it was being in New Town, but the heavy press of despair had lifted from his heart—at least for a time.

  Everything they’d seen that morning, every person Shelby had interviewed, had confirmed what he’d suspected since the moment they’d crossed New Town’s border. This was the prototype for the future. It might take five years to roll out and another ten years to implement. Time during which the people Shelby was concerned about, the people he was concerned about, would suffer.

  But that wasn’t the point he saw this fine spring day in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The point was that they did indeed have a future, and it looked surprisingly brighter than he had expected it would. It looked like the dawning of a new world.

  Max spent the afternoon nosing around the New Town security center. At first they didn’t want to let him see past the front office, but a call to Captain MacRae settled that.

  “Name’s Gavin—Gavin Blake.” The middle-aged man escorting him through the facility was of average height and stocky build, and he had bright red hair, including a well-trimmed beard. “Looks like you, Max Berkman, get the gold star tour.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “So you’re a lawyer?”

  “I was.”

  “I worked in
a jail over in Dodge City.” Gavin pulled on his beard, trying to suppress a smile. “Learned a lot of good lawyer jokes.”

  “Jokes about lawyers?” Max deadpanned. “You’re kidding.”

  “What do you get when you run an honest lawyer contest? No winners.”

  Max groaned.

  “How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

  “As many as you can afford,” they said in unison.

  Gavin led him down a hall and into a room lined with computer monitors. For a moment, Max stood frozen, staring at them, wondering if he was seeing things that weren’t actually there. But then something beeped, a man walked over to turn off an alarm, and Max realized the monitors were not a hallucination.

  “Where did…” Max needed to swallow, but his throat had gone completely dry. “Where did this stuff come from?”

  “Different places.” Gavin gave him a minute to walk about the room and grow accustomed again to the presence of technology, but Max wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to the sight of bright screens or the sound of a mouse clicking. It was all so familiar, and at the same time so foreign.

  “But I thought…”

  “That it had all been destroyed. Yeah, most of us assumed that as well, at least during the first few weeks, but of course the flare had varying degrees of intensity. If you were in one of the areas that received less than the full effect and you had your equipment sheltered underground, then it still worked.”

  “Worked how? There was nothing to hook it up to.”

  “There were generators, but you’re basically correct. When people tried to log on, they found that the World Wide Web was gone. The broad public network ceased to exist the moment the satellites went off-line. In other words, you could boot up a computer, but there was no way to communicate with…well, anything.”

  “And a computer without anyone receiving on the other end—”

  “Without the ability to send or receive information? It’s a box, a large calculator, basically useless. What you’re seeing here is an intranet system.”